Polybook - Aaron "The Cabbage Detective" Rudderham

So this seems to be a pretty popular thing to do, and with it keeping me accountable to actually produce content and be able to get feedback easily, I thought it'd be a good idea to start one of these myself. Lets see how far we can go.

  • Aaron Rudderham(thecabbagedetective) replied

    silentheart00 Thanks!


    With the patch the initial idea was to have it be different shades of white and grey with a black background, similar to the other patches, and was merely colouring/shading for fun. However when I showed it to my friend he liked the direction I was going and so I decided to just stick with what I'm doing now, gonna be giving it a crimson red background. I think that might clash with the rest of the jacket but if that's what he wants that's what he gets I suppose. Will probably change it for "my" version though.

  • Aaron Rudderham(thecabbagedetective) replied

    ssmurfmier1985 Why thank you! It's certainly a bit of a sinking feeling but I just gotta push through after all, right?

  • Aaron Rudderham(thecabbagedetective) replied

    @drgnclw Cheers! Already feel better. That's kind of the vibe I was going for so I'm pleased that that's coming through!

  • Aaron Rudderham(thecabbagedetective) replied

    Hey there!


    Haven't done *too* much, but I did finish my first 2D piece! Not great by any means but I think for my first attempt it's not that bad at all.



    I also decided to work on the cowboy boots a tad, getting some basic lines set up for the details in which I'll add to later, as well as using procedural textures.



    Never really made a texture map in something like Krita before, so this'll be an experience. Well, that's it for now, happy Blending!

  • yukino hatake(yukinoh1989) replied


    thecabbagedetective really good to hear you're back and feeling better. The drawing looks good. And I really love those boots nice work 

  • silentheart00 replied

    thecabbagedetective Ah, okay.  Nice patch, would be interested in seeing how that looks in the overall scheme of things.

  • Aaron Rudderham(thecabbagedetective) replied

    yyukinoh1989 Why thank you! Hope you've been taking care of yourself as well.

  • Aaron Rudderham(thecabbagedetective) replied

    silentheart00 Thanks! I'd have something to show you today but for whatever reason my PC does *not* like rendering my bear, I presume it's due to the hair particles, and just crashes like 75% of the time. Bummer.


  • Aaron Rudderham(thecabbagedetective) replied

    Hey there!


    Nothing really much to show today. Put the patch onto the jacket but it crashed during rendering so that's something I'll have to reserve for another time. Also got incredibly frustrated with weight painting the bear's rig as the patches aren't connected to the jacket and would never look right. Ended up scrapping the weight paint entirely and will probably end up manually placing the patches into a pose as this model was made before I learnt about good topology and preparing models for rigging, so it'll probably be quicker to pose the patches as opposed to redoing them entirely for a very similar result.


    Hoping to get these projects done before the new year. Bums me out a tad because I had a Christmas themed project planed but there's no way in hell I'll have time to do it now, but I can easily re purpose it to have a non-Christmas theme. Outside of that I want to be prepared for the next class, and finish some unfinished course. Those being:


    Fundamentals of Texturing (got scared of the final exercise 'cause I couldn't (and admittedly still really can't) draw)

    Acting for Animators (got absorbed by classes and forgot about it)

    Mesh Modeling Bootcamp (see previous)


    I also remember that today is technically my one year anniversary of Blender, as today was when I finished creating the infamous donut from BlenderGuru. Both happy and disappointed with my progress, paradoxically. Happy because I have a tendency to give up things easily so doing this for a year is a pretty big step, and disappointed because I haven't gotten as far as I'd like yet, but I'm probably being overly expectant of myself as usual, skill takes time after all!


    Well that's it from me, goodnight and happy Blending!

  • silentheart00 replied

    thecabbagedetective Bummer about the bear crashing things.  Hopefully you'll get somewhere with it and not be stuck.

    Congrats on 1 year!  What skills you do have are pretty damn good, so you just need to tighten up on your weaknesses.  You got this.

  • smurfmier1985 replied

    thecabbagedetective Congrats on one year! You have some nice skills already just keep focused and you will keep improving 😊 Also nice plan! Looking forward to what you can do in those courses, and also to all your projects. Btw, Kent mentioned recently, while it isn't 100% certain yet, it's likely the next class will be about advanced material creation (shader forge type of stuff), so you might want to do some stuff related to that since you want to be prepared. Also he's trying to wait till the new class system is up and running, the indication for starting classes again was like March (or April at the latest, new class system or not), so you got some time 😎

  • Pavel Mazanik(nekronavt) replied

    thecabbagedetective Congrats with blendniversary ;)

  • yukino hatake(yukinoh1989) replied


    thecabbagedetective hey first of all thanx too. I try to keep as calm possible. Been making plans of what I wanna do and learn next year. 21 december I will also know better results of the doctor on whenever or not I am allowed to study again. This week was the first time again I had to work for 4 hours. Tomorrow is the last day to see how I do there and how it affects me. I really hope to be able to start again.

    Also congrats Aaron with you're 1 year here. You gained a lot of skills so let's keep improving and add lots off years here. I also love you're plan. It's always a good idea to think off what we want to achieve at the end of the week, month and or year. 

  • Aaron Rudderham(thecabbagedetective) replied

    silentheart00 Cheers brother, same to you! Feel I've been taking it too easy at times but that's what the holidays are about, right?

  • Aaron Rudderham(thecabbagedetective) replied

    ssmurfmier1985 Why thanks! And that's kind of a blessing, I thought the class would take place in January so that gives me some breathing room to pursue my own projects, looking forward to what we're both capable of!


  • Aaron Rudderham(thecabbagedetective) replied

    nekronavt Thank you!


  • Aaron Rudderham(thecabbagedetective) replied

    yyukinoh1989 Good to hear you're doing better! Well, this was before the surgery notification but I don't doubt you'll be fine there as well. And thank you! Lets see what we can do!


  • Aaron Rudderham(thecabbagedetective) replied

    Hey everyone!


    Been quite busy today due to last minute Christmas stuff but I have enough time to update you all on what's happening.


    First of all I did a little retrospective of my Blender "career" thus far, you can read it here if you'd like. Thanks again to all of you for making it that much more enjoyable!


    I've also finished* the two characters for the projects. All they need is a bit of polishing and then some rigging and I think we're good to go in putting them in their respective scenes. First up is the bear:



    Still not happy with that fur...


    And then we have Isaac:



    Still not sure if I should include the eyelashes or not...


    Here's a close up of the boots. Not the most detailed but considering they'll be viewed at a distance I thought it'd suffice:



    Little bright with the colours, but the reference I was given (my friend's own cowboy boots) they're honestly not that far off.


    As I said, hoping to get these done by the new year, but that means I gotta start making my own rigs... oh God... uggghhhh... well, no one ever got gud by whining, so time to suck it up!


    Now if you'll excuse me I'm going to please my ears whilst I do some last minute wrapping, have a good one and happy Blending!


    * - Friend is satisfied with the quality but I'll probably end up tweaking it for a month because I feel I can do better with the hair physics and the materials and blegh

  • smurfmier1985 replied

    thecabbagedetective You made great progress with all projects! 

    The fur of the bear: yeah you could tweak it for another month if you want, but why not create a new character with fur? And try to make that one a bit better than the previous one? You might enjoy that more then endlessly working on this one, and developing more then just you're fur-skills 😊

    As for the eyelashes, I'm torn. I like that they add some realism to this stylized character, but they're also quite 'busy', lots of little details while the rest has bigger simpler shapes. In this case I would probably go with what the client likes best, but that's just what I would do. Sorry I can't be more of help with this... loving the boots though 😬

    I like your story on twitter by the way, nice overview of your first year with Blender!! Mine isn't up till June 😉

    By the way, what happened to the Menacing Cereal Bowl I wonder..?

    Happy Holidays Aaron! Looking forward to the things you'll amaze us with next year 😃

  • smurfmier1985 replied

    thecabbagedetective Oh as for rigging, why not use the riggify addon? It's  pretty easy to use, there is a tutorial on it on CG Cookie. Will save you loads of time!!